United States Congress
From the time of the Pendleton Act in 1883, the proportion of government employees covered by civil service
regulations grew slowly. The coming of the New Deal, however, threatened to reverse this trend. In order
to deal with the widespread unemployment of the Depression, the federal government became the employer
of last resort, and the ranks of federal employees swelled with millions of Works Progress Administration,
Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration, and other workers. Such employment was obviously
unsuited to civil service regulation, and the overwhelming popularity of President Franklin Roosevelt
and his party suggested to critics that the great numbers of unregulated federal employees were being
transformed into a new spoils system of far greater magnitude than had ever existed before.
Because of its sweeping provisions, the Hatch Act may be regarded as having brought the spoils system
to an end, but together with other civil service legislation, it led to a new difficulty. Federal workers
were protected from peremptory dismissal but protected so well that it became difficult to discharge the
incompetent or lazy. Moreover, advancement was also protected from political interference to the point
where it became relatively automatic, and length of service, not ability or accomplishment, became the
criterion for promotion. This provided an additional impetus to a traditional American dislike for bureaucracies
and bureaucrats, and government service lost public respect as a result.
One might expect that the Hatch Act would also finally have made presidential candidates completely dependent
upon local and state political organizations, but this was not the case. In the first post-war election,
Harry Truman won in spite of being abandoned by large segments of the Democratic Party organization. In
following years, the old urban political machines were dismantled, state organizations were disrupted
by redistricting and voters’ rights acts, and candidates began to bypass political organizations by appealing
to the voters directly through the increasingly powerful medium of television.
How does the Hatch Act address the ongoing problem of the "spoils system"? How does it attempt
to protect relief recipients and non-civil service employees from political threats? In what way does
it conflict with the First Amendment to the Constitution? Why do you think Congress has never restored
the political rights of government employees? |
